


Handcuffs & Vodka

by StoriesOfImagination



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alcohol, Drabble, F/M, Fluff, Handcuffs, One Shot, Post-Season 2 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 16:15:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4926436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StoriesOfImagination/pseuds/StoriesOfImagination
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a run-in with the SCPD, Oliver finds himself in need of Felicity's lock picking skills. And vodka. LOTS of vodka.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Handcuffs & Vodka

Felicity woke to the sound of some very insistent knocking at her bedroom window. Groggy, and more than a little annoyed, she grabbed a Taser out of her bedside table drawer and carefully pulled back the curtain.

“Oliver?” She opened the door to her fire escape. “What the actual _hell_? I haven’t even been asleep that long. What could be so urgent that you-“

“Felicity!” Oliver cut her off, “Could you just…?” He sighed and jerked his head behind him. “I need your help.”

Felicity noticed for the first time that Oliver’s hands were trapped behind him in a pair of SCPD standard issue handcuffs. She gasped and yanked him inside by his jacket. After quickly relocking the door and closing the curtain, she turned to him and hissed, “What happened? Who did you piss-off?”

Oliver’s jaw tightened as he snapped, “Apparently there are some new graduates of the police academy in town. One of them was a little eager when I tried to hand over a thief.”

Felicity was stunned. “A police baby did this? How did they even-?”

“Could we talk about it _after_ you get me out of these?”

“I don’t understand. I thought you could pick stuff like this. And why haven’t you stepped through them? I can’t imagine how you even made it up the fire escape with your hands behind you like that. I mean how did you even pull the ladder down?”

“ _Felicity_ , please!” He took a breath and tried to center himself. Oliver hated feeling trapped; it sent his senses into overdrive. “I can’t pick it for the same reason I can’t step over my hands – she rigged it in the back somehow and I’m completely stuck. _Please_ look at it and get me out of this.”

“Alright come here, let’s have a look.” She turned him gently and investigated the cuffs. “Well this is…how on _earth_ did she…? Holy crap that’s good. Oliver, she somehow hooked the cuffs into the clip of your quiver. It’s in there so well I’m not sure how I’m even going to detach it without the keys.”

Oliver’s shoulders dropped and he hung his head. He’d had a long, crappy day and this just took the cake.

Felicity patted his arm absent mindedly while she tried to figure out how to attack the problem. “Here, sit on the bed. I need to start by unbuckling the quiver in the front and that should give me more room to work in the back.”

Oliver sat heavily on the edge of the bed. He had an expression on his face that was about the same as a kicked puppy. Felicity pushed his hood back off his head and gently removed his mask.

“No reason for this right now,” she said, carefully laying the mask on her bedside table. It gave her a strange little flutter to see it there. Next she unbuckled the front strap of the quiver and then climbed onto her knees behind Oliver.

“Well that helps a _little_ ,” she muttered, frowning at the problem. “Yeah, I need to get my lock picks. Hold on.” Felicity clambered back off the bed and was half-way to the door when she turned back to Oliver. “Do you want anything to drink or…?”

“Honestly Felicity, I could go through an _inhuman_ amount of vodka right now, but I am unable to _hold a glass_ ,” he ground out.

“Right. Just a minute.”

Two and a half _long_ minutes of rustling and clinking later, she re-entered the bedroom with a small leather case under her arm, two glasses and a nearly full bottle of good vodka. Tossing the case on the bed beside him, Felicity poured a glass of vodka and held it in front of Oliver’s mouth.

“Take the edge off?”

Oliver didn’t know whether to feel annoyed or relieved. He nodded warily and she held the glass to his lower lip and helped him to sling back a shot as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Alright, let’s see what I can do with this.”

As she climbed behind him once again, he felt as though the world was slipping out of kilter somehow. The pleasant warmth of the alcohol combined with her fingers ghosting over his skin as she examined the locks was unsettling, yet also comforting in a way he could not name.

The minutes ticked by while Felicity worked at the lock. Dig had tried to teach her once, but to be honest she had been distracted by refurbishing the Foundry and had not been a good student. Something she was regretting now.

“It must be absolutely _killing_ you that Dig and Lyla are out of town this week,” she mused. “Of all the crappy timing…now you get me instead of the experts.”

Oliver stayed silent. He was still fuming that he allowed himself to be trussed-up by a damn _rookie_ and did not trust himself to speak. The last thing he needed to do was annoy the one person he could trust to get him out of this mess. And he could trust her. He knew that with a certainty. She would never abandon him- whether to an enemy or his own stupidity. Felicity was more than just a partner. How much more, well, that remained to be seen.

The lock clicked. Felicity quickly opened the cuff and eased his right hand out.

Oliver sighed. “Thank you. Now maybe I can-“

“No. Don’t try to move,” Felicity cut him off quickly. “It’s still all snarled up in the back.” She looked at him thoughtfully. “Scooch to the right a little.”

Oliver looked at her questioningly but did as she asked. She stood in front of him and unzipped his green leather jacket. After carefully sliding his right arm out of it, she brought the weight of both the jacket and the quiver to rest on the bed at his left so that he could sit more comfortably while she worked to free his other hand. Then she poured him another drink and placed it in his right hand.

“Here; you work on this while I work on that,” she nodded to the remaining cuff.

A grateful smile crept its way onto Oliver’s mouth and he shook his head a little.

She sat next to him and gently held his wrist in one hand and deftly maneuvered the pick with the other. He drank the shot and watched her work. She opened her mouth as though she was going to say something and then quickly snapped her teeth together. She worried her lower lip and turned an interesting shade of pink, all while staring determinedly at the lock.

Oliver tilted his head and his eyes narrowed. “Fe-li-ci-ty, what’s going on?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” she answered a little too quickly.

“What aren’t you telling me?’

“There!” Felicity released the second lock with a cry of relief. She slid the cuff and the jacket from his arm and pulled the whole thing across her lap to work on getting the handcuffs detached from the clothing, and still resolutely refused to look Oliver in the eye.

Oliver watched her for a minute and then poured two more vodka shots. Holding one out to her he said, “Here Felicity, I’d say you’ve earned this.” She took the glass from him with a small smile. He leaned close to her and holding her gaze, clinked their glasses together.

“Thank you Felicity,” he said seriously.

“Any time Oliver.”

They tossed back the shots and before Felicity could lose herself in the project again, Oliver took hold of her hand under the pretense of taking her glass for a refill. Holding it steady, he looked at her with a piercing gaze and a small uptick of his mouth.

“Please tell me what you are thinking.”

She took in a shaky breath but found that she was unable to look away. “You are absolutely _not_ allowed to hold this against me because I actually _stopped_ myself from saying it and now you’re _making me say it anyway_!”

Oliver seemed amused by her outburst. “Okay…”

“I was thinking – _thinking_ but not _saying_ – that any time I had imagined you on my bed drinking vodka and wearing handcuffs, this was not even _close_ to how I pictured it- although come to think of it you _were_ wearing your leathers sometimes…”

Oliver’s mouth gaped.

Felicity sighed, “I’m going to need another drink.” She filled the glasses and stood there looking at them for a moment as if considering drinking both of them. Oliver took one from her and drank it while she sat down with hers.

She downed her shot and resumed her work on the jacket. Oliver studied her while she worked.

“I know I’ve made a mess of things,” he began softly. “I’ve made a _lot_ of bad decisions lately. But you have never been one of them.”

Felicity looked up at him, startled.

“I honestly didn’t remember that Dig and Lyla were out of town,” he said with a chuckle. “My first instinct, my first thought when I was handcuffed was to come to you. I have fantasies and dreams of my own Felicity, and they are all about you.”

He cupped her cheek in his hand and she instinctively leaned into it. He looked so sincere that it brought tears to her eyes.

Oliver leaned in closer to her and paused, just a breath away from her lips, waiting to see what she wanted. She brought her hands up to rest on his chest and closed the gap between them. The kiss was so sweet. It was a kiss that – finally - was not a “goodbye” or a “not now” but instead was a resounding “Yes.”

Felicity sighed into his mouth. Oliver responded by tilting his head and deepening the kiss; chasing after her tongue with his own. Felicity’s hands wandered over the expanse of his chest, shoulders and back, enjoying the play of his muscles moving under her touch.

Oliver pulled away from her mouth suddenly, a puzzled expression on his face. “Why vodka?”

“Hmm?”

“Why is your fantasy to drink vodka in bed with me?”

Felicity tilted her head with a grin, “Are you sure you want to open this particular Pandora’s Box?”

Oliver’s eyes darkened and he began nipping small kisses along her jawline. “Very. Sure.”

“Nngh- yeah okay then. There’s something about the way you speak Russian…”

Oliver stilled. “Really?”

“Yeah. It-“ she sucked in a ragged breath. “It makes me want to lick vodka off your abs.”

Oliver grinned wolfishly at her, “As long as I can reciprocate I think we can make that happen. That is a very large bottle you have there. And the handcuffs? We can always put these to good use.”

“Oh that’s alright, I have some of my own.” Oliver’s smile grew brighter, “Felicity you are full of surprises tonight.” “You have no idea,” she replied with a wicked grin of her own.


End file.
